Musical - White Christmas

This was my Christmas present to John.  He really loved Tom Chambers in Strictly and we have watched his show dance with Camilla Dallerup many times and most especially his video of learning to drum and tap dance like Fred Astaire so often that it is now a family joke!







Tom Chambers was staring in White Christmas with Aled Jones and it turns out someone from the Bill for a special 8 week run over Christmas.  It finished last night which is when I got tickets for.  Sadly it wasn't a sell out but we thoroughly enjoyed it.  We didn't know the story and weren't really familiar with the songs.

I absolutely loved the sets - some of my favourites ever.  They changed often and after about half a dozen different sets I thought I ought to count how many but I was too involved with the show!  They were very full on sets and also it was a Vermont Inn which meant I loved the look of it any way.  There was lots of full on chorus dance numbers - John especially loved the tap dance ones, claiming it is his favourite type of dance.  I liked it when they tap danced on a little piano!  I thought the singing and acting was good too, being more impressed with the people I hadn't heard of before, including Betty and especially Martha.

 

Good times!

Musical - The Sound of Music

Very excited that this year Leicester Curve's Christmas production was the Sound of Music.  What a great choice, especially after our summer holiday in Salzburg.  And just the week before we broke up, the Year 5's had performed it at our school so it was definitely fresh in our minds. 

I had been to see it on stage in London when I was at uni at the time that the BBC and Andrew Lloyd Weber had done their 'How do you solve a problem like maria?' programme and Connie Fisher had won and was performing.  Although she was off for 2 weeks when we went as she had strained her voice!  I remember feeling it wasn't as good as the film as it turned out it was more like the original stage show before the film.  The songs were in a different order and there were extra ones for the baroness and they didn't have the puppet show. 

So in many ways I preferred it this time as I was half expecting those changes and indeed it was very like I remembered in London.  I was particularly excited as it was at the Curve and I dashed to the toilet before it started that I passed some nuns from the cast going in the opposite direction towards the stage!  The children were very good and I was particularly impressed with Captain Von Trapp as he sounded just like Christopher Plummer.  And I was very excited to find out in the interval that he had played Nick Jordan in Holby City who I had really liked!!

There was a funny bit where Maria is surprised by I think Brighitta so she exclaims and her exclamation made me and many in the audience in jump!  It was nice being the audience for the festival at the end though we all agreed that they didn't build the tension that much with the nazis and in the convent.  There was an interestingly huge picture back drop for the convent which was quite startling. 

The songs are so good - what a lot of great ones.  It was after buying the soundtrack last time I saw it that Lonely Goatherd became my favourite and still is.  Although I especially love it with the marionettes in the film.

Thank you for such a great Christmas present!

Theatre - Shakespeare In Love

This was an exciting pre-birthday adventure.  A few years ago Mum had given me theatre vouchers for my birthday and I had been quite particular about what sort of outing I spend them on.  This seemed to fit the criteria so the weekend before my birthday John and I headed to London and we invited Lizzie to go with us.

Shakespeare In Love has long been in my top 5 films and at the moment I would probably put it in the number one position.  I had heard they were making a play of it and I was in two minds about it.  Then I read a review in the week which said that the story had found it's natural home and it had four stars and said people would like it and if you liked the film then you would love it.  So that clinched it for me.

It was a fill that I remember watching when I was home sick from school and loving it all and crying so much (in a good way) at the end.   I loved that it was funny ('she has a cottage'), dramatic in a drama theatrical sense, a love story and it was the first thing I remember that made me think that Shakespeare wasn't all bad!

We went up to London for the matinee and sat in the stalls feeling very close to the action.  It was a great play with lots of lines direct from the film which I liked.  Though oddly, I didn't laugh out loud at those, I guess because I new they were coming, but there was the odd new line that I laughed at.  The staging was cool as it moved so you were either front of stage or back stage and I was very excited about being in the audience for the final production.  I was hoping that Queen Elizabeth would appear in our audience though.

Definitely a fun theatre time!